The Taco Bell in Guthrie cuts its full-time employees’ hours to avoid mandates under the new health care law.

Now, a mother of three who works at that restaurant is speaking out. Under the Affordable Care Act, any company that has more than 50 full-time workers falls under the new health insurance mandate.

We talked to the company that owns the Guthrie restaurant today, and it confirmed the cuts. Now, employees there aren’t allowed to work more than 28 hours a week.

Johnna Davis has worked at the Taco Bell in Guthrie since September. She’s seen a 200 dollar cut in her paycheck since a new store policy went into effect.

“What we were being told was one thing, and that was, ‘we’re going to offer benefits, we’ll just keep all of our full time employees and then come December, their whole story changed,” Johnna Davis said.

She says her manager held a meeting before Christmas, saying employees’ hours would be cut in the new year.

“They informed everybody that nobody was considered full-time any longer, that everybody was now considered part-time, and [they] would be cutting hours back to 28 hours or less due to Obamacare,” Davis said.

Under the Affordable Care Act, companies are required to provide insurance to its full-time employees, or face fines. Davis would’ve qualified for an insurance plan.

“Several of the other people I work with, some of them are single parents, and we do the best we can, and 28 hours a week just isn’t going to cut it for the bills,” Davis said.

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Disqus Comments

JTwig

Its funny that this gets so much attention, as my wife’s hours at Target were cut in December (which is normally when she can get the most hours) and nobody other than management gets more than 28-hours in a week anymore. They didn’t say it was because of Obamacare, but what else could it be? She has worked for them for 6-years and this is the first time this has ever happend.

Bobby Tucker

Was Taco Bell providing these workers with private health insurance before this? The article doesn’t say. These people will just move to states that are setting up exchanges.

Bobby Tucker

#1,
Was your wife getting private healthcare insurance from Target before she got her hours cut?

Pjay

The IRS has already issued new regulations that will force businesses to add up hours of all their part-timers to see if the TOTAL will equal 50 or more “full time” employees. Is this goes into effect, every business will CLOSE.

Dobby

You’ll see lots of companies cutting workers hours so they are not full time status to avoid buying costly health care insurance and avoid paying the fine. Expect many companies to starting dropping health care insurance for their workers as well. Health insurance costs are skyrocketing. It’s cheaper for companies to drop health insurance for their workers and simply pay the $2,000 fine per employee. Millions and millions of middle class workers will be without health care. They’ll not only lose their company health care insurance, but they’ll also have to pay the Obamacare tax/fine if they don’t buy it themselves. Most won’t be able to afford health care insurance, so they’ll have to pay the fine/tax.

Marcy

Wait till this woman checks her paycheck since the payroll taxes were increased. BIG SHOCKER FACE coming from her. Hey…hope she didn’t vote for the socialist. If she did then she has no one to blame but herself.

It’s called Obama don’t care. That’s because that bastard doesn’t care how many businesses he screws over, how many low and middle income people lose their jobs or have hours cut. All he cares about is the power and control taken by the federal government. He won’t likely speak on it because the press is on its knees begging to ask tough questions like how was your golf game after a one week layoff?

He wants to kill this country as it was and remake it in his image. A failure masked as success. He got elected because of his skin color and he wasn’t afraid to play dirty. He will go out and take on the accent or tone of his next audience and a bunch of morons too stupid to know they are being played will eat it up because they are desperate for help and too many are willing to do the hard work. So they wait for Obama to throw them a life preserver.

What they fail to realize is that life preserver has a slow leak that Obama put in it. They are drowning before they can get to shore. But Obama cares… Just listen to the passion in his latest accent, dialog, inflection or whatever the latest thing is to talk down to you.

Votemout2012

Hope the dopes who voted for Obama are the first to feel the pain!

bear

O.K., so Pelosi claims we can’t know what the bill is until we pass it.

The “single parents” expect certainty from an employer when nobody knows the full extent and impact of this monstrous bill. Her employer probably wanted to maintain the status quo until their accountant said, “Uh oh, rock and a hard place.”

How about going to the baby-daddies to foot the bills?

The “victim” says she can’t afford to live on reduced income. Can employers afford to stay in business with their federally mandated reduction in net income? Is she too stupid to connect those dots?

The government she undoubtedly voted for has created this guaranteed poverty for all no-win situation.

I would also be surprised if companies with 50-100 workers breaking into 2 smaller companies one servicing the others to stay below the 50 worker limit. They will outsource booking, janitorial, secretarial and IT to this new company for instance. One company now made into two.

Pleasance

I’ll wager a lot of these employees voted for Obama in the first place. I really have no sympathy. If they don’t like the reduced hours then they should start up their own companies.

Bigkahuna

Johnna Davis. Single mom, hard worker…..any bet on who she voted for?

David Milstein

They don’t make much money anyway.

Pjay

If fast food joints raised their prices enough to provide mandated health insurance for their employees, a taco or burger would cost ten bucks. They’re screwed either way…

welcome to Obamamerica, where the shortages are divided amongst the peasants, for their own good, of course.

Bigkahuna

#2 it’s doubtful they were paying insurance for her. They can’t afford it for all but management at the best. Workers making minimum wage or just above don’t pick up to move to states that set up exchanges. Besides I believe all will have exchanges. Some just refuse at the state level and will force Obama to be in charge of the clusterf#ck

As expected, when a govt tries to mandate utopia, it never works. The govt can say everyone gets healthcare and it’s free but that’s impossible. The low info voter who is a product of our wonderful public school system neither understand history nor economics. It is a cold, hard shock to them when reality hits–

Note how the media reports with a clear SLANT that the problem is big MEANY 10 store franchise loop holing its employees out of getting ” free ” healthcare.

NO interviews with franchise managers explaining how they would have to price the 99c taco at $7.99 to cover ” free ” healthcare and sales would drop off so sharply ALL 10 franchises would be forced to CLOSE and ALL employees lose ALL their hours.

luke duke

the sense of entitlement is strong in this one! She feels she is entitled to her paycheck amount because, um, she is. These people cannot grasp that a paycheck is not charity nor is it an entitlement. Her productivity didn’t change, but the gubmint just raised the cost of paying her for that productivity a bunch. huh. who’d have thought that her hours or paycheck might get cut?

Once the rules change to roll up all workers, expect her salary to go down by at least the $2000 annual fine (tax) that the government is imposing on her employer.

“New Mexico will join at least 15 other states and the District of Columbia in broadening eligibility for the health care program under terms of a health care overhaul championed by President Barack Obama.

Martinez made the announcement Wednesday during a speech in Albuquerque.

About a fourth of New Mexico’s population currently receives health care through Medicaid, but the program mostly covers uninsured children in low-income families along with the disabled and some extremely low-income adults.

The expansion in 2014 will make adults eligible with incomes of about $26,000 for a family of three or $15,400 for an individual.”

Elections have consequences. Whole industries will change to contend with the massive impact of the destruction of Healthcare as we know it. The cowardace of John Roberts will not be forgotten. Repeal of Obamacare by any means is still on the table. Our entire way of life hangs in the balance.

Death panels, red tape, admin costs eating 80% of every dollar given to the government to “provide” healthcare. Has anyone had a good experience at the social security office? These public servants have no soul. Dead eyes, dead inside, serving you…

Chippy

When one man enslaves another it’s call slavery. When government enslaves man it’s called compassion.

Hera

Did she vote for Obama? Elections have consequences, or so we’ve been told.

Highlander

Wahhhh!! Elections have consequences. Would you rather get your hours cut, or have everyone paying five bucks for a taco? Either way, we’re all screwed. You low information voters were warned about this when you voted to re-elect the architect of this atrocity, and you ignored us. Now EAT IT!

Highlander

This would almost be funny if it wasn’t going to destroy the entire country. Watching the ignorant masses suffer the consequences of their greed and stupidity is the sort of thing that reality TV shows are made of … I wonder if someone will come up with one?

Blacque Jacques Shellacque

“Several of the other people I work with, some of them are single parents, and we do the best we can, and 28 hours a week just isn’t going to cut it for the bills,” Davis said.

The question that wasn’t asked is: Ms Davis, two months ago in the presidential election, who did you vote for?

Highlander

Call it “Taco Hell” maybe?

Highlander

Or maybe “DOPES” …. they could use the same catchy theme song from COPS ….

Gary

It’s like Atlas Shrugged.

These people think if they can just get it passed into law, we’ll have no recourse.
Then we find a way around their stupid law.

Guess what’s next. Commence company demonization (by name).

And when will these people on the bottom end of the earning scale put 2 and 2 together.
You voted for Obama. You asked for it. You got it. Live with it.

ClarkFL

Elections have consequences. Some of the liberal sheep that just luuuuvvv Barack Obama are getting a taste of those consequences now. The ones that could vote and didn’t, they deserve this too. The ones that voted against Obama, them I genuinely feel sorry for.

Eh, wrong sorry Bobby………..PRIVATE insurance is what YOU or I can purchase OURSELVES. Employer provided insurance is insurance that is available THRU the employer, and allows the individual to avail oneself of the benefits of a larger pool. Then we also have Goobermint healthcare….medicare, aid etc….

Try reading the Uhhhhbummercare bill, lays out the definitions right there………if you can do so without puking.

Bobby Tucker

#55:
Okay. I see what you mean. (I was just putting Employer Provided Healthcare in the Private column) There’s no way a minimum wage worker could afford Private health insurance.

Do we know if Taco Bell was providing her with Employer Provided Healthcare?

sue

I worked for Taco Bell in 2 different states(NM and LA). In neither place did I get insurance through them. They generally kept you at 30 to 35 hours a week. The only positions that were truly full-time were the managers. With that said I would guess that she wasn’t offered insurance because she wasn’t full-time.

I feel very sorry for anyone this happens to if they voted for Romney. If you voted for Obama or didn’t vote at all then it’s your own damn fault. It’s going to be extremely difficult for these people to make up the difference with another part-time job as employers will find it nearly impossible to juggle eveyone’s hours and days worked to coincide with other employment. Hours are being cut at businesses all over the country. They simply cannot stay in business if they are forced to provide expensive healthcare. Not only is it extremely unlikely the economy will improve, I’m thinking our economy is on the fast track to hitting rock bottom, thanks to Obama.

FurryGuy

#7 January 10, 2013 at 9:10 am
Mike McMorrison commented:

Taco Bell shareholders are happy about this.

Do you understand the economics of what private-owned franchising entails? Or do you just accept what the American Pravda Propaganda Complex talking heads spew as Gospel Truth, especially when it fits your blinkered worldview?

YourMaster

A business should do these things before hiring employee’s from now on
1) ask them voted for 0bama or whether they didn’t
-If they voted for 0bama keep them at part time forever….
no healthcare, reduced pay, no benefits.

each time a dem wins… make them poorer and poorer and poorer
and when a republican wins give at least the conservative workers a lil bonus.

soon they will start to see that voting democrat has heavy consquences that they have to live out for the next 10-40 yrs.

Isn’t this eaxctly what the dems want …ask yourself..where do you think these employees will now turn to…the govt..they probably qualify for food stamps and wouldn’t surprise me they quit and get on welfare bc the combo of food stamps and welfare are probably more than there 28 hour work provides

I have taken this from the TB website:
Taco Bell Employee Job Benefits
Taco Bell employees may access several job benefits. Even a new-hire entry-level employee enjoys the work benefits of schedule flexibility, job training, and industry-competitive pay rates. Eligible Taco Bell associates gain access to a variety of employment benefits. Qualified Taco Bell workers may take advantage of health and wellness perks, future planning bonuses, and further employee benefits.

it’s very selfish of these companies doing this. All big companies making all the money they make, should pay for their employee’s healthcare, If not all of us who are paying the crazy amont were paying for our healthcare plan just keeps going up. cause these poor Taco Bell employee’s cant pay for their insurance, so they go to the ER and we pay for it. All the money making business’s step up and give your employee’s healthcare. come on now

chris

these corporations make billions in profit,its about time to give back to there employees but there to greedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!